The news about the environment hasn’t been good these last few months and this article in Mongabay by Sam Friedberg may offer a window in what might be in store for other parts of Africa as the impact from the climate crisis turns once fertile lands into dusty fields, leaving rural farmers with no option but to chop down their valuable trees for charcoal.
The article narrates how demand for charcoal is decimating one of Madagascar’s protected forests that is home to the country’s only remaining hunter-gatherer community.
The Mikea people, as they are known, are running out of food as the forest around them dwindles and the wildlife they depend on for food disappears. In the words of one tribesman,
“The forest is all I know, I don’t want to leave,” he told Mongabay while sitting by a campfire, smoking his pipe. “If there’s enough food I want to stay, but there is just not enough food in the forest anymore.”
This passage from a neighboring charcoal-maker is particularly poignant, too:
Tsifantari Zilbare, a 35-year-old father from Ankilimalinika village, told Mongabay he never wanted to be a charcoal maker, but found himself with no other options after the soil became so dry that he could no longer farm. He walked as he spoke, along a 20-kilometer (12-mile) route that he and many other local men now trek almost every day. It runs past rivers that have run dry, empty fields that once were fertile, and former forest with nothing left standing but baobab trees that store too much water to burn for charcoal. At the end is a section of original spiny forest outside the Mikea’s protected terrain, perfect for turning into charcoal.
It is easy to see how this scenario, the desiccation of once fertile lands, could affect vulnerable parts of Africa. East, Central, and West Africa are particularly at risk.
Solutions exist and policymakers and the development community must take action before it’s too late. We must have the courage to make the necessary changes.
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